POETRY: PERCEPTION OF LIFE

Prosaic Dust

Inherent and absolute smallness gazing up at the night sky

Burgeoning pure hurting light

Messaging Earth from the glorious past

Transpose myself into the milky

way on a whim

Sumptuous views imagined

Unsurpassed and seemingly infinite regalia

Celestial exactitudes overwhelm

My dust

A bit ordinary really

In dilapidated form

Furthermost compared to the wonders of cosmic photons

Certainly not Ptolemaic

Sometimes My outline is blurred

Still sorting out life

How experiences have sculptured the person

Getting old now

But not fully sussed

The stranger who lives my life at times

I know him well but his actions still puzzle me

No need for such dissonance

Elements of wisdom gained legitimately through hard moments

Philosophy reframed over the lifespan

Seemingly nothing left to prove

So smile

And let him on his way

Success by error

The chutney worked

Pickled onions, a treat

Home made bread

A rite of passage as returners to rurality

But my favourite, the cider

An abject failure

Great vinegar

Or even petrol

But not the classic savour

I'm eyeing the apple tree already

Another go this year

The craft much deeper

Parameters tighter than the obvious

Quality always has hidden pathways

Life lesson

Strands of Grey

It's odd to think I'm old

Slowly losing the hard won gains over a lifetime

Things like my looks and strength

The assumed balance over uneven ground

Trusting in my own decisions

Skills honed over challenging years

Fully comprehending my own era

And now

The relative mystery of the current age

Fads and fashion

Equally bafflingly at times

It's always been thus

Continuously moving to the next thing

Creating history everyday

Dreaming the next steps

Just as it should be

The young seeking a future

On their own terms

The old considering

How that worked out for them

So many similarities

Only the context has changed

Youth shakes hands with their future

While the elderly wave goodbye to their past

Grace Note

The sound of the grace note

Escaping from the dark interior of the ancient public house

Acoustic confirmation of the quality of the musicians within

An unexpected centre of excellence

Mellow tones and local beer

A frozen heart is moved

The Cake

The birthday was significant
The person was very significant
Therefore the cake was highly significant

Essentially a chemical dance of familiar ingredients
Blended together
To make an additional masterpiece on the day

One ate the other.

My Mate Will

I saw Shakespeare in the pub and asked him about his place in English literacy.

He was incredibly self effacing and reminded me that at the time he was considered hot stuff and courted by the rich and royalty.
But it's only now that we consider him a fundamental part of scholarly history.

A point well made.

We had a long chat about the porter in Macbeth and how his soliloquy provides a comic foil to the tension at the opening of Act two, scene three.

Then he had to leg it back to his cottage.

Just as he is about to leave
I pitched an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in two cities, one in an undersea world and the other on the moon

He raised an eyebrow and then shrugged before waving goodbye.

Always good company Will.

Ten Years

Sitting

Thoughts pecking round my feet

The complexity of life

A maze in the mind

And a tension of the soul

Undulatory momentum carried me forward for so long

Heavy on the heart at times

Fatigue, a familiar foe

Each step slowed by the weight of office

A sense of desiccation, with little left to give

But history steps up to present the successes

The battles hard won and the future assured

Cementing of friendships and being part of the journey of others

Sweet and complicated

But blissfully fulfilling

Gone and never to return and I miss it already.

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